


heat death of the universe (and other fundamental truths)

by sometimeseffable



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1, Crowley submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, brief switching of pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 20:24:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20841497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sometimeseffable/pseuds/sometimeseffable
Summary: Demons are, on a fundamental level, not meant for happiness.(Crowley's always been a bit of a drama queen)





	heat death of the universe (and other fundamental truths)

As a given rule, Crowley does not wake up first.

Most of the time, Aziraphale doesn’t even sleep, spending the night lying on his side reading. Crowley will wind snake-like around him, face burrowed in his hair, breath soft and warm on the nape of his neck. The angel will miracle away the stiff joints from laying in one spot too long (and sometimes the nightmares too, when they come in quiet whimpers and hands fisted in his dressing gown, not that Crowley will admit it).

The flat is cold, but their bed is snug and cozy when consciousness drags him slowly into the dawn.

It wasn’t always like this. Sharing a bed, and the implicit trust that came with such an act, had been a hard thing to get accustomed to. Sometimes he still wakes in a panic, scrambling for his glasses on the bedside table before he remembers they aren’t there anymore. They’re over on the dresser, a meter from the foot of the bed, folded neatly next to Aziraphale’s pocket watch and bowtie.

_ I wish you wouldn’t,  _ Aziraphale had said once, wistful, as Crowley reached into his jacket pocket where the ubiquitous shades were tucked away.  _ They’re so lovely, my dear. _

So yellow eyes slit open, muzzy but calm, to the view of a purely angelic smile. Crowley wakes to a hand running up and down his back and a million little butterfly kisses peppered across his face. He smiles, slow and clumsy, and Aziraphale is patient as his sleep-muddled lips work out the mechanics of kissing him back.

“Good morning,” Aziraphale murmurs after a moment of languorous kissing, “I’m making breakfast. Care for anything in particular?”

“Mm.” Crowley shifts in his arms, stretches, squinting at him bleary-eyed. A teasing smile curves his lips. “Are you on the menu?”

Aziraphale chuckles with a final press of lips to his forehead. “Rapscallion.”

Crowley grumbles at the loss of warmth, but swaddles himself up in the newly freed blankets nonetheless. He slips pleasantly in and out of consciousness until the smell of sizzling butter and batter tempts him out of his nest.

Tugging the comforter tight across bare shoulders, Crowley makes the trek all the way to the tiny kitchen in Aziraphale’s ramshackle flat above the bookshop. The angel hadn’t even known it was there except as a place for books he didn’t feel compelled to display in the shop below. Not until Crowley started making a habit of staying the night, and cleared it out in order to throw together a nice breakfast in bed.

He leans against the doorframe and takes in the sight before him.

Aziraphale stands with his back to the door, poking the edges of a pancake as it fries in the pan, dressed down in a knit jumper and terrible tartan socks that had been a Christmas present from years and years ago. Some soft Buddy Holly song crackles a melody from the ancient phonograph. Aziraphale hums along, off-key and frankly terrible.

Every day since the End, it seems, breaks the record for the most relaxed Aziraphale’s ever been. Without the weight of Heaven breathing down his neck, the angel has taken to retirement with a certain  _ joie de vivre.  _ A more human man, well-versed in the intricacies of affection and romance, might wind his arms around Aziraphale’s middle and rest his chin on blond curls, humming just as off-key with him as they take in the new day together.

Crowley is not a man. Crowley is a demon. 

Therefore, Crowley sneaks up behind him and steals a cut strawberry off the cutting board, viper-quick. He pops it in his mouth as a scandalized Aziraphale smacks him on the shoulder.

“Wily old serpent,” he accuses, and Crowley grins before kissing him.

It tastes like strawberries, sweet and ripe, like what he used to imagine being happy felt like.

* * *

There are always days where the weight of the world feels oppressive on his upright back. Where the burden of a human body, of legs and teeth and thundering heartbeats, presses heavy on his chest. It’s all Crowley can do to slip into something a little more comfortable as a man-shaped existence threatens to consume him.

These days tend to happen more as the weather gets colder. Crowley may not have a lizard on his head like other demons, but his blood still runs poikilothermic in his veins, slowing him down and making him more susceptible to such overwhelming moments. Coincidentally, those frosty, blustering, grey days of windswept hats and upturned umbrellas happen to be the ones where A.Z Fell and Co. closes its doors far earlier than the posted hours.

Not that that’s anything out of the usual.

Today is one of those days. If one were to peek in through the grimy windows of one unusual Soho bookshop, one might see an angel sipping cocoa under a large, heavy, red-bellied serpent. One might then get the wrong idea and call for help, but that would be rather nosy of one, wouldn’t it?

Point made. 

Said angel is bundled to the throat in a thick oatmeal jumper, spectacles slid to the tip of his nose, concentrating on an ancient tome set on the sofa arm. Buttery light spills from the bookshelves in the form of half-melted candles. The serpent-who-was-yesterday-a-man is coiled in his lap, kept warm by Aziraphale’s ethereal glow combined with the little snake-sized tube he’d knit Crowley for just such occasions. 

Crowley had sneered and spat over the gift, holding it between finger and thumb in disgust while adamantly refusing to use it. In hindsight, open vehemence towards a one-of-a-kind gift hand-crafted by one’s romantic partner normally would have been met with a row and a night on the backroom’s ancient couch.

Aziraphale had merely sighed and patted his cheek in acceptance. He had then very graciously not said a word when, the very next day, he found a black coil of serpent dozing in his woolen tube under the heat lamp.

It’s black. With tiny, terrible flame patterns near the tail.

Not to mention it does its heaven-sent duty of keeping Crowley warm from the inside-out. Demons cannot sense love, but the tube smells of cinnamon and cloves and cocoa, warm like sun-hot sand at the beach, and he thinks love must feel something like misshapen wool. 

It’s not in a snake’s nature to purr; however, Crowley lets out a pleased hiss as one hand strokes his arrow-shaped head. Aziraphale continues the gentle touches down the length of him, numbing the crushing load of six millennia that occasionally comes knocking. It’s just what he needs. The demon dozes, uninterrupted, and feels peace settle in his ribs.

After a few hours of quiet, of turned pages and candle flickers, a loving hand working the madness from his mind, Crowley slinks out of the tube. He turns around on the empty seat before slithering back the other way into Aziraphale’s lap and popping back into human form. Lanky arms wind around him as Crowley tucks his head against a jumper-clad shoulder.

“Good evening, dear,” the angel says without so much as batting an eye. Crowley hums and buries his nose in the warmth of Aziraphale’s neck, tongue poking out in a little lick despite that he doesn’t need that to smell his cologne. It’s spicy, a hint of florals, lilac and sweet.

“Let’s get dinner,” Crowley mumbles sleepily, “My treat.”

The same hand returns to rub at his bony spine, heavier now that he’s in man-shape again, and  _ oh,  _ that’s good. Aziraphale hums. Turns his head to press a kiss against Crowley’s temple.

“Italian?”

“Read my mind, angel.”

* * *

As much as Crowley sometimes needs to shut down, to shutter out the rest of the world when he’s feeling overwhelmed, he also gets antsy. All that demonic energy builds up inside such a small, fragile vessel, and he finds he needs to  _ move _ . Before cars (wonderful, lovely, polluting cars), there weren’t very good ways of expending this energy save for walking the length of England. Or, regretfully, horses. 

The Bentley revolutionized that. It’s the closest he can get to flying without a reprimand from Downstairs.  _ Nothing  _ can match the feel of wind whipping through primaries as he hurtles rocket-fast towards the firmament, only to spread wings last minute and soar gracefully through the troposphere.

There’s very little grace left in him now, though. Putting the windows down while going ninety miles near Surrey has to come close enough.

It’s after a lovely lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall creperie in Hampstead that Crowley’s gone a bit manic with restless energy. Aziraphale graciously lets the demon drag him through the shops before relenting to a drive out in the country.

It’s here, in the golden light of a warm September sunset, that Crowley finds his mind pleasantly at peace. 

Their hands rest below the gearshift, fingers entwined. Crowley occasionally lifts their hands to press little kisses to Aziraphale’s knuckles, butterfly promises on eon-rough skin.

Aziraphale had, in one of the rare moments where they tried to be one-hundred percent honest with each other, expressed a fear that it would drive them apart. Crowley was fast-paced and always on the move, relentlessly Modern, while he tended towards anachronistic, settled happily in the aesthetics of days long past. It was not entirely out of the question to wonder if maybe he’d grow tired of sitting still and leave the angel behind in the dust.

Crowley had spent the rest of the night dutifully dissuading him of the notion. They still haven’t righted the sofa from where it’d slid during...well.

A faint smile twitches his lips at the memory. The idea that, of the two of them,  _ Crowley  _ would be the one to leave Aziraphale behind is so utterly, tragically ridiculous. It makes him want to laugh until his ribs break; it terrifies him more than anything.

_ How do you not know?  _ he wants to ask, to shake the angel by the shoulders until it sinks in,  _ You’re everything. Everything. How could you think I would leave you? Am I not doing enough to prove it? _

Instead, he turns their hands so as to skim a kiss across the inside of Aziraphale’s wrist. It is not enough; it never will be.  _ He  _ never will be. But for right now, with the sunshine-warmth of Aziraphale in the passenger seat next to him, the soft exhale as sweet, melting eyes gaze at him with open affection, Crowley thinks he can handle it.

* * *

Aziraphale may be a scholar, but Crowley has always been master of the stars.

Only once had they met in Egypt, during a brief stint while Crowley tempted the Ptolemaic Pharaoh at the time into yet another ill-fated dalliance with a concubine (had it been Philadelphus or Euergetes? He never could keep that dynasty straight). Bored with watching Ptolomey inevitably bring about his own downfall, Crowley had journeyed to Alexandria in the hopes of catching up with an old workplace acquaintance. 

It would be centuries before the Arrangement came about, but the demon had run into a certain angel far too often to be coincidence, and was beginning to catch onto some of Aziraphale’s more repetitive quirks. Big library in a flourishing empire with untold stacks of stuffy old manuscripts? Like a moth to a flame.

All she had to do was ask after a rather peculiar white-curled Celt, and there Aziraphale was, resplendent in a chiton and sandals. The angel seemed to have been born ready for a tour of his most favorite place on Earth.

Crowley had pulled out already-ancient star charts and glowered at bronze globes, drawling for hours and hours on what the Greeks had got wrong that they’d already figured out in China. She paused every so often to reluctantly admit the things they’d done right. Aziraphale had listened, enraptured, with his chin rested heavy on a fist. 

Occasionally, he’d wave away the scowls of other scholars with a minor miracle. Some of the more haughty types took issue with the flame-haired woman in a peplos and smoky quartz glasses lecturing their most knowledgeable patron. Crowley paid them no mind and nattered on, relentless.

It had been the first time since Creation that anyone listened to her talk about the stars. Crowley was loathe to reveal any vulnerabilities, but Aziraphale had always coaxed them out of her without even trying. In the centuries that followed, that had never changed.

They finally get that picnic. A few months after the near End, in a field of wildflowers, per a fussing Aziraphale’s request. One of their little afternoon drives revealed a delightful spot down near Brighton, where the wind rustles melodic through dark green trees no one’s thought about logging yet. Even Crowley has to admit the sunset is real stunner, all pinks and purples and brightfire red at the end. It paints the white of Aziraphale’s curls a damn near cherubic gold. Really, he can’t refuse when the angel pleads for some stories. 

“What about that?” he asks, pointing up at a cluster of gas and dust near Andromeda. His fingers are tangled in Crowley’s windswept hair, the demon’s head snug in his lap. Around them lays the skeletal remnants of a picnic, cheese rinds and bread heels, grape stems and empty bottles of various reds, devoured evidence of a most pleasurable evening. 

Crowley squints up at the night sky. Even with all the light pollution from London’s ember glow, their supernatural vision allows them a glimpse at what even those trillion-dollar satellites have yet to uncover.

_ Eat your heart out, NASA,  _ he thinks, a smidge vindictive.

“That one’s  _ ancient, _ ” Crowley warbles, letting a hand flap up at the partially-hidden nebula, “Right near the beginning, that was. All mine; didn’t let Gabriel’s sticky little fingers anywhere  _ near  _ it. Humans haven’t got a name for it yet; I’d imagine they’d go for one of those old Greek ones, the muses? Dunno. Anyway…”

Aziraphale makes the appropriate “hmms” and “oohs” and asks intricate questions where it takes a moment to forge the answer, preceded by a “Hsgkfg  _ well -  _ “ before he’s off again. All the while, nimble finger massage into his scalp, digging into the good bits behind his ears and letting a fingertip stroke light along the tattoo at his temple. 

Crowley doesn’t read. Never has; all the tiny, harsh black lines don’t go well with a snake’s vision. But he Knows; he Questions. It’s not often he finds someone safe enough to let spill the tideflood of interests, of hyperfixations deeply hidden. Vulnerability does not befit a demon.

But knowledge befits Aziraphale, who does not snicker when he trips over words in his haste to let them all out, and never,  _ never _ asks him to stop. Not even when the chill of early morning starts to bite through their clothes and the idea of packing up flits between them. 

No. Aziraphale sits. He hums in interest; he listens. He waits for Crowley to trail off before tapping him once on the forehead, and offers the demon a hand up.

* * *

There are nights where Crowley is not the broken one.

He startles awake in the wee hours of the morning. The reason remains unclear beyond a vague feeling of  _ wrong.  _ It’s dark and cold and he wonders, for a moment, if he’s alone, and had only imagined the past few months of honeymoon bliss. 

“Angel?”

“I’m fine.” It’s a hoarse whisper, a strangled D-flat of despair. Crowley can see him trembling in the moon’s silver cast, the glisten of fresh tears tracking down pale cheeks, the tense line of him rigidly defiant against his inherent softness.

Losing one’s family, no matter how distant and borderline abusive (more than borderline, but Aziraphale gets defensive when he gets worked up), is hard. You think you belong to something, some greater purpose, a collective that, sure, doesn’t like you personally very much, but would have your back if the world was ending. The support system of the Host was flimsy at best and imaginary at worst. It had taken a long, long time for Aziraphale to work through all the sticky, complicated emotions that went along with losing his connection to Heaven. It’s still work - six thousand years of microaggressions doesn’t go away in a handful of years. 

But even so, there are nights when Crowley knows he misses it. He’d missed Heaven like a severed limb after the Fall. And he knows there is nothing he can truly do to help.

Crowley wraps him up in arms and wings. Spindly hands pet gently over his belly. He presses his forehead to Aziraphale’s nape, laying kisses against his too-warm skin. Heartworn promises, benedictions freely given in the dark. 

_ I’m sorry,  _ he wants to shout,  _ I’m sorry you chose me and lost Her. I’m sorry for what it cost. Thank you for staying. Please never leave me. _

Silent sobs wrack Aziraphale’s too-human frame for what seems like hours, and Crowley holds him through it all. Finally, a hand reaches awkwardly back to pat his hair, his cheek. Crowley kisses his palm.

“Hey,” he gruffs, “Back with me?”

A nod from under his chin.

“Nightmare?”

The angel looses a shaky breath. “Of sorts.”

“Mm. Cocoa?”

“Please.”

The demon clambers off the bed and down the stairs, giving Aziraphale time alone to collect himself. Going through the motions of making cocoa is so humanly simple, yet it grounds him nevertheless. Chocolate, pan, whisk, milk. Old fashioned - none of that instant crap for his angel. 

It seems like some act of divine providence that Aziraphale comes down the stairs exactly one minute after he sets the mug on the coffee table. He probably heard the  _ clink  _ of ceramic on wood.

Crowley clicks on a random television channel; some awful drivel that’d only made a splash at the cinemas for how bad it’d been (he’d know, he helped with that). The couch molds to his shape as it’s wont to do after years and years getting drunk off Chandeau in the sanctity of this backroom. It’s usually Crowley who drapes himself all over Aziraphale. A desperate bid for affection, for reassurance of the heartbeat under his finger tips, of the world still revolving around them.

This is not to say that millennia of the cold, cruel hands of Heaven haven’t left the angel just as touched-starved. It’s just less frequent of an occurrence.

But when Aziraphale deposits himself in Crowley’s lap, cocoa sat within reach, neither of them mention it. He tucks his face against Crowley’s shoulder; Crowley wraps an arm around his waist and revels in the ache of being allowed to existence in each other’s orbits. 

They watch terrible telly. They breathe in the fact that their world didn’t end. They adjust as best as two celestial beings can. 

* * *

They are not perfect.

Six thousand years of hidden feelings, of stolen glances and vehement refusals, of sticking firm to respective Sides, leaves a mark. How can it not?

They’re arguing. They do that a lot, quick snipes and jabs and elbows to the ribs, like they always have. Sometimes, though, it hits a little too close to home. 

Their fights always sting, but  _ this  _ one strikes a nerve. Like jamming one’s elbow into a door and having the tingly pain radiate from one’s funny bone for longer than is strictly necessary.

It’s been building. Words are said; accusations flung. There comes a point where Crowley can’t force any words out other than,  _ “Air”,  _ and storms out of the shop in a dark flurry of feathers. The memory of Aziraphale’s stricken expression sears flashpowder bright on the backs of his eyeslids. 

Crowley slams the door to his flat hard enough to crack the marble. He screams incoherent rage at his plants; hurls around old vinyls, shatters them, and miracles them whole only to shatter them again. All the while his heart beats a rapid tattoo in his chest, echoing the maelstrom wreaking havoc in his mind. 

_ not enough not enough not enough not enough _

Really, did he think a demon was capable of love? That he could  _ possibly  _ stand up to the light of Heaven, the Goodness that resides in Aziraphale’s very soul? They are an  _ angel.  _ And a  _ demon.  _ Two shards of a puzzle that were never meant to fit. Frankly, Crowley’s lucky for the time he’d got before it all went to bloody buggering shit. Their universe has been expanding so fast, so hot, for so long, and finally it’s run out of room, burning up in a great, collapsing heat death, as it was always meant to.

(Crowley has, and will always be, a tad dramatic).

When the knock comes, there’s no question who it is. 

Aziraphale is on the other side, an ostentatious array of blue hyacinths clenched in one hand. A peace offering; an apology in such a ludicrous and outdated fashion that it fits the bill perfectly. Only Aziraphale would manage to rustle up such an exquisite bouquet at this hour (they’re fresh, perfumed in a sweet, earthy scent instead of the lightning-strike burn of a miracle). 

It’s with a nervous smile and anguished eyes that the flowers are proffered. He does not voice an apology; there is nothing to say that hasn’t been said over thousands of years. All he can do is wait, and hope.

Of course, there is no need to hope. Never is. Crowley sighs, deflates. The burning anger has sated into hot coals. He steps aside and lets Aziraphale bustle in, rummage around in the kitchen, fill a mason jar with filtered water and arrange this apology on the table. A prize on a pedestal. 

The angel steps back, pleased with his handiwork, and turns to make a cheerful remark. Crowley steps forward before he can. Wraps his arms around linen shoulders, chin pillowed in cloud-soft curls. Aziraphale returns the hug immediately.

“Oh, my dear…” he whispers against Crowley’s chest.

Crowley stands in silence for a heartbeat. Two beats. Savoring the feel of the world in his arms.

“I’m afraid I can’t love you,” he admits. It’s nothing more than a breath, a confession, like someone peered into the deepest depths of his soul and took a crowbar to it. Demons are, on a fundamental level, not meant for happiness. Their capacity to love disintegrated in the ghost blue flames of sulfurous fire, along with anything that could vaguely be defined as a virtue. 

If Aziraphale is a being made of starlight, how could a demon ever love him the way an angel deserves to be loved? Crowley is nothing compared to the all-encompassing warmth of the Almighty, even if the rest of Her kids are a load of assholes in Westwood suits.

He half expects Aziraphale to say as much. Instead, a weak chuckle puffs warm on his throat.

“You do.”

Crowley swallows down the hope. “How do you know?”

Aziraphale is silent a moment. Hands fist in Crowley’s jacket, reflexive. Despite the whole ‘toddling grandfatherly bookshop owner’ thing, he is a warrior. Always has been. And he will fight for what is right every time.

He says, “Because you don’t sleep well unless I’m in the bed with you. And you steal my strawberries but take over making breakfast every time because you know I think it tastes better when you do it. Because you put up with my terrible knitting, and my going too slow, and all the questions about the stars that you’re so clever about. And the...the nightmares. How you make cocoa from scratch when they happen. And how sometimes I slip up and talk about  _ my Side  _ like they mean a single buggering damn to me, when it’s only ever been  _ our  _ Side, and I was too thick to realize it until just recently because I was such a coward about my love for you. And I  _ do  _ love you, my dear, even if you think otherwise.”

Crowley does not answer. He can’t; there’s a lump in his throat a mile wide, so all he can manage is a choked  _ hm  _ as Aziraphale’s palms skate up the length of his back. 

“And,” Aziraphale continues, “I can sense love, you dolt. You radiate it like the  _ sun. _ ”

_ Oh,  _ Crowley thinks.

“Oh,” he says as a blush creeps over pale cheekbones. He hadn’t actually thought of that before. Which, in hindsight, is...a bit dull of him. 

He pulls back enough that Aziraphale’s beaming grin peeks up at him from the circle of his arms. 

“Now,” and it’s like nothing ever went wrong, and nothing ever changed. The universe stayed the same, whole and unbroken and entirely alive, “What say you to some telly, hm? I believe your  _ ‘Golden Gals’  _ programme is on tonight.”

Aziraphale sets off for the living room, leaving Crowley grinning dopily behind his back. 

_ Fuck _ , but he’s never been happier.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come hang out for more gomens writing on [tumblr](http://sometimeseffable.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Edit: now with adorable [fanart](https://aziraiphale.tumblr.com/image/188816680060) by [Aziraiphale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aziraiphale/pseuds/Aziraiphale)!


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